Page 76 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
“What don’t you understand?” I demand, voice rising just enough to show the crack in my control. “I’m not stupid. Ifeelwhen you hold back. I see the hesitation in your eyes. When you deflect, when youwon’tfinish a sentence, when you suddenly need to check something on your comm. That’s not professionalism. That’s concealment.”
He doesn’t flinch.
He just watches — quiet, poised, like a hurricane contained in bone and muscle.
“Yara,” he says slowly, almost reverent, “there are layers to this that you can’t — and shouldn’t — see.”
I feel it like heat under my ribs.
An instinctual recoil.
“Don’t tell me you’re protecting me,” I say — voice shaking now, not with fear, but with something far deeper and rawer. “I can handle the truth. Ineedthe truth. And if you want to be in my life — if you want me — you have to stop hiding it.”
There’s a long silence.
And it’s loud.
Like thunder before the sky opens up.
I step closer.
Half a breath away from him.
I can see the tension in his eyes — not denial, not defensiveness — butrestraint.
Like a beast holding back from tearing the world apart.
“You have to understand,” he says gently, “the things I’ve done… they weren’t mistakes. They were necessary.”
“Necessary forwhat,Grau?” My voice breaks against that word — necessary — like it’s a brand I don’t want seared into my chest. “To protect me? Or to protectyourself?”
His gaze holds mine — unwavering, unguarded — for a moment so charged it feels like electricity on my skin.
“It’s never been about you,” he says.
No. That’s not what he means.
He means:
I’m doing this so you don’t have to.
But he doesn’t say that.
Because Reapers don’t say soft, human things like that.
Theyfeelthem.
He doesn’t want to scare me with his world.
But he’s already done that.
I take another step closer.
Close enough to see the faint flicker of conflict in his pupils.
Close enough to feel the warmth rising off him like a living flame.
“I don’t need you to protect me from my own world,” I say, my voice uneven, fierce, shaking with emotion I can barely articulate. “I need you to trustme.To trust that I can handle hard truths — not just the warm parts of your presence.”
